


Longest Night

by honestys_easy



Category: Real Person Fiction, Tulsa Gangstas
Genre: Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-29
Updated: 2010-07-29
Packaged: 2017-12-05 02:37:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/717888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honestys_easy/pseuds/honestys_easy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>David had already left for L.A. two weeks ago.  Neal just about left for New York, with not even an extra pair of socks unpacked to stay another morning.  And Andy...just felt <span class="u">left</span>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Longest Night

**Author's Note:**

> This story was inspired by the song “Longest Night” by Howie Day; I loved the visuals and the flow of this song and this circumstance just popped into my head. I hope you like it :)

Three days. Three nights and days.

Maybe Neal’s been captured by road pirates somewhere in Ohio, Mad-Max style.

Andy tries to smirk at his own joke but the trigger's missing from his brain, all his focus landing on the silent cell phone in his grip. Maybe his brain's run off to live in New York, too.

It takes a while to unpack all your shit and settle in a new place--a new home. Andy's well aware of this. Knowing Neal, he packed his charger at the bottom of the very last box, or didn't pack it at all, and he probably tried to buy one of those that plugs into the car lighter at a gas station in Tennessee only to get the wrong kind, and he'd say fuck it and have to physically restrain himself from throwing his phone down on the pavement.

Maybe he couldn't restrain himself, and the phone Andy's waiting for is scattered in brightly-colored plastic bits along I-70. When Neal couldn't temper his own anger, Andy was always the one who could master it for him.

He shouldn't expect a call. He shouldn't keep acting like Neal owes him one.

The blue-bright display on the phone's face blinks out from inactivity, leaving Andy surrounded by the pitch darkness of his bedroom, alone.

***

_He didn't recognize the car horn beeping persistently at his open window at first; Andy had memorized the tone of Neal's impatient horn, never one to accept fashionable lateness, the loud, brassy noise just another facet to Neal in Andy's eyes, recognizable like music. But this was tinny, canned; like someone placed a dampener on a trombone, corked up all its life. His father's, Andy realized, when he saw the familiar face behind the unfamiliar wheel._

_"My car’s crammed with shit already," Neal explained before Andy asked. "No extra room for nothing in there. Not even your skinny ass."_

_A playful poke of Neal's finger into Andy's ribs garnered a low chuckle from Andy, squirming in the leather seat. The foreign car made this night feel even stranger to him, like none of this was real. Some dystopic alternate universe where Neal Tiemann unironically drives a Cadillac and Andy loses his best friend._

_The rev of the car engine jolted him back to reality, the crunch of his driveway's gravel underneath the tires bludgeoning his hopes that this was a dream. It might not have been Neal's car but it was Neal driving them through the midnight black streets of Tulsa, and tomorrow it would be Neal driving right out of them._

_"Where we off to?" Andy asked, trying to keep the cloud of gloom out of his voice. "Bryan pick a place?" The diner off Maple, a dive bar in the third ward--Bryan's typical haunts. When Neal had called him that night Andy frowned at the injustice; last night in town and he'd probably have to share Neal with a roomful of drunks who wouldn't care if they both lived or died._

_"Nope." The tendrils of cigarette smoke curling around Neal's face obscured his intentions._

_Andy sat up a little straighter, tried to read the look on Neal's face but he gave nothing away, his stare intent on the dark road ahead of them, pulling farther and farther away from the city center. "Neal--"_

_"Tonight’s not for Bryan," Neal said, the rest of his words drifting out the open window into an autumn night. They needn’t be spoken to be understood, by the two men in the Cadillac, the streets, the very night itself that threatened to last as long as they needed it. This night was for them._

***

He's thought to put down the cell phone in his hand for a while now; gotten close to doing it a few times, too. If Neal won't call Andy, then Andy won't call him, fuck being the bigger man. But then he remembers they're not in a fight, there is no bigger man; the three days of silence have been playing tricks on Andy's mind, stretching and tugging, prodding until they feel like the longest three days of his life. Andy tries to remember the last time he and Neal spent more than three days without speaking to one another, and he fails.

He holds onto the phone; grips it tighter into a fist, and the little display lights up between his fingers, making the room glow.

Maybe Neal fell asleep at the wheel--no one in the passenger seat to watch him, no Andy to tell him to stop the fucking car and find a motel--and jettisoned himself Dukes of Hazzard style into the Atlantic.

Andy closes his eyes, feels the bitter breeze against his skin from the open window. He doesn't like the taste of that alternative on his tongue.

But the one he actually entertains, whispers to the winds because it's too terrible to keep only to himself, is more plausible than a random kidnapping or a slightly hilarious tragedy. That Neal hasn't called him in three days because he doesn't want to call.

***

_The car finally stopped at the edge of Keystone Lake, past the pavement, past the dirt road, almost to the point where Neal and Andy would have to push the car back ashore to get out again. In the daytime the lake was a living memory, summers spent on speedboats and learning how to swim embedded into every stone; but at night, the skies dark around the lake except for the stars, it held more power than Andy imagined._

_"Beer's in the trunk," Neal said, killing the engine, but neither man made a move to get out of their seats and retrieve it. Andy wanted to be sober that night; he had a feeling he’d want to remember this._

_Staring out to the vast shoreline at their dashboard, Andy found he had to remind himself there was a lake there, thousands of tons of water lying still, its tiny, inconsequential tides lapping at the shore quieter than the crickets. It was so easy to forget there was something there and not nothing, like the lake itself packed up its belongings and made tracks eastward in the middle of the night._

_When Neal shut off the Cadillac's headlights, allowing the dark to curve around them like a sheet, the only dim light reflected on the lake’s surface were the stars._

_"Won’t see any of them in New York."_

_Andy recalled their vacation there last summer, untethered and wild. A vacation he looks back on now with sadness, knowing Neal took it as his chance to get a feel for a city he planned to make his home. They stayed late in Coney Island one night to watch the fireworks, then caught the train back to the fully stocked bars of Manhattan. Even before the first gunpowdered burst of light flew into the sky, Andy couldn't see any stars, not even the bright, big ones, the ones in Tulsa that you feel like you can reach out and touch if you try hard enough._

_Neal's lips curved into a smile; a curious, soft thing, so very different from the toothy grins Andy was used to. His eyes gazed beyond the car's dashboard and through the windshield, a faraway look, like his thoughts were already a thousand miles away. "It’s like a whole other world there."_

_For a brief moment anger stabbed at Andy's chest, masking the hurt; even if Neal wanted to spend his last night with Andy, his mind had already left for the journey. But in another flash it was gone, Neal's eyes no longer on the endless darkness of the lake but trained on Andy, the strange smile going sly, turning into a familiar smirk._

_"But fuck the stars," he said with conviction, slapping his hand down on the drive shaft between their seats, then on Andy's shoulder. "Astrology’s shit, and I never got my navigation merit badge, anyway."_

_Andy laughed, and Neal grinned, his hand still on Andy's shoulder, and the mood lightened as they talked about Neal's ill-fated and disastrously short time in the Boy Scouts. And in that Cadillac Neal was still Neal, and Andy still Andy, and this night was still theirs._

***

There's always texting, the ubiquitous, guilt-free way to reach out and touch someone without ever making committed contact. The wireless version of casual sex. Neal can respond to it if he chooses, ignore it if alligators have dragged him down into the sewers of Manhattan. An easy out.

A blinking cursor stares back at him as his fingers hover over the keypad. It's too informal, too distant, like tossing out a tow line into a cold Atlantic fog. Clicking "send" doesn’t bridge the space between them, but deepens it into a cavern, makes the thousand miles that separate them feel twice as long. He can't text; what can he say in truncated netspeak that would ever be enough? And he sighs, bitterly, because Neal would have had the right words.

Andy's too stubborn to admit to himself he wants nothing short of hearing Neal's voice.

He's pacing like an idiot in his bedroom, willing the phone in his hands to ring, feeling like a fool or, even worse, some emotional, adolescent girl. Neal's never made him feel this way before, their friendship the definition of the word "chill," but then again, Neal's never not called him before, and they're breaking into uncharted territory here, territory Andy didn't think existed before Neal's last night in Tulsa.

Maybe they've changed everything. Maybe there's no going back, not if Neal moves back to Tulsa, not even if they somehow end up in the same city, playing together again, pouring out their hearts through music on the same stage. Their friendship before could have spanned the distance but maybe now, with this...maybe that's what Neal's afraid of.

The stars glittering out his window are too bright now, too large, and Andy can hardly take it any longer.

***

_David had already left for L.A. two weeks ago. Neal just about left for New York, with not even an extra pair of socks unpacked to stay another morning. And Andy...just felt left._

_He opened his mouth to break the comfortable silence that fell between them, hampered only by the softest sounds of Neal's fingers drumming absently on Andy’s shoulder. It was never uncommon or awkward for the pair to sit in silence, saying more with a sideways glance or the hint of a smile than could ever be spoken with breath and words. But Neal's silence wasn't enough for Andy, not this night, and he could barely see the expression in his blue eyes, the light from the stars their only guide._

_"Just don’t forget about...the band," he eked out feebly, too proud to ask that Neal not forget about him, too scared that Neal would pledge that promise and then break it. But one thing Neal would never relinquish was his music; he could burn the tread off his tires and leave Tulsa forever, but he could never turn his back so easily on the music they made, the creations they shared. Music was Neal's air to breathe as much as it was Andy's blood to spill._

_The hand at his shoulder tightened, forced Andy to look Neal in the eye. Neal stopped fucking around about the Boy Scouts and pretending this was like any other night. "How could I ever forget?" His brow knit, his voice sincere; Andy thought he had never heard such a lack of sarcasm coming from the other man. "The band is us."_

_They always came back to the songs of their youth; even after eight years Neal played like the chords were borne deep within him from birth, coded into his DNA. But those songs were seedlings, growing too large and spindly for their Midwestern town; they were a part of Neal, after all, and they too were all too anxious to get out of Tulsa. It wasn't that Andy didn't believe him; it was that he couldn't._

_When his eyes dropped to the drive shaft, not trusting himself to look Neal in the eye, Neal finally understood. "I’ll call," he promised, and Andy's head shot back up, defiant._

_"You fucking better," he challenged._

_The hint of a smirk on Neal's lips told Andy that whatever Neal was doing, it was working. Neal knew, he always knew, and he always would. Andy's mouth broadened into a smile, no longer so fretful, because no one could maneuver their way around his moods like Neal did. No one knew him in the same way as Neal._

_Andy reached out and poked Neal in the ribs as he ordered, "And text me, too."_

_Neal held up his free hand in a mock pledge, honest as the boy scout he never became. "I promise to stuff your phone full of pictures of random shit I find on the side of the road."_

_He was grinning by then, a weight lifting from his shoulders, though Neal's hand remained. "And e-mail," Andy reminded him._

_"I'll Facebook you."_

_"What, you gonna poke me?" Andy laughed, stealing away another jab of his finger into Neal's side. They could have gone on for hours like that, dismissing the beer in the trunk and the patient highway waiting for the morning. Andy wished he had the power to stretch the night out to last forever, if every joke he made, every remark that garnered a smile from Neal added another minute to the night, another second._

_He was about to warn Neal not to stalk him on Myspace when he found his breath cut off by Neal's lips against his._

_The hand at Andy's shoulder moved to the back of his neck, fingers threading into his hair. Andy's own hand reached out into a space that felt too far now, until he touched the worn cotton of Neal's shirt, tangling it into his fist. Neal tasted like cigarettes and the crisp lake air, the cool metal piercings in his lips stinging against Andy's like memories._

_When Andy responded to the kiss, parting his lips to let Neal inside, Neal gave out the breathiest of moans, almost a sigh, as if to say, "How could I ever forget?"_

***

He clenches his jaw, his lips a tight, thin line at the memory of them opening to Neal's touch. One part of his conscience tells him he's a fool to hold onto that phone, hoping in vain for that call; the other part reminds him he's an idiot if he doesn't.

The hours pass, the moon makes a lazy arc across the night sky, meandering its way between the stars; and Andy's will, and his grip on the cell phone, weakens. Fuck waiting, he thinks, letting out a defeated sigh. Fuck making the call himself. Just...

"Fuck," he mutters, and he's not proud that his voice breaks.

Andy finally sets the cell phone down on his nightstand; it still feels like the keys are pressed against his skin, like a phantom limb. His eyes are almost closed, ready for a fitful, restless sleep, when a familiar blue light, brighter than the stars, startles him to attention. The phone vibrates a second later, skidding across the table in its own personal dance.

There's a picture text waiting for him when he picks it up, gleaming bright and true, as if to say, he should never have doubted. It's a small, pinhole of a shot, but it assures Andy that Neal's phone isn't road trash on the interstate or submerged at the bottom of the East River. Partially obscured by a familiar thumb--Neal never got the hang of camera phones, not when Andy was always the perfect photographer--Andy saw an inky black fraction of the New York skyline, its glittering skyscrapers reaching up like crystal talons into an orange-hued night. The intensity of the lights would have swallowed Keystone Lake whole, reduced the dark, powerful waters to a puddle.

His eyes flicker down to the message below the scene, Neal's first words to him since their last words in Tulsa. Andy bites his lip to stop himself from laughing, or sighing, or grinning beyond control, because he wants to do all three.

"No stars--but I can still find my way back home."

Andy stares at the screen until it goes dark, touches the keypad, and stares again. When the phone goes off in his hands approximately two minutes later, he doesn't need to check the display to know who is calling. His grin widens, his spirits lifting; it's late, even later on the East Coast, but they would both know it's never too late for this call.

Careful not to awaken the rest of the house, he answers the phone in a hushed voice, their conversation only for them. "Took you long enough," he says, and there is laughter on the other end of the line.

Neal is still Neal. Andy is still Andy. And they are still _them_.


End file.
